Marc Awodey

Songs

Let us speak of birth
for a quiet change
for I heard the airy utterances
of a crested cardinal shielded
under foliage today.

Its speech was berry red.
Its ribbon of whistling streamed
over triangles of morning shade
signaling to a lover perhaps
above layers of whispering leaves.

I did not see its scarlet
but I heard its succulent color
and timbre in my complicated wood
clear over the staccato babble
of less luminous birds.

All of the nesting races
dangled in arboreal mobiles
now squirming full of hatchling mouths
delicately beaked and tongued
woven shrewdly together with songs.

Our Empty Sea

1.
Under our empty sea a turquoise world exists
as a sickly changeling beyond recollection
in trench, plateau, plain, barrow of cloudy
schist.
On tossing desert continuum resides
a pacific mind
and in ocean mind there is no drying soil.
Only whales consider the possibility of
a surface
above bright heaven's sky of amethyst.

2.
At pencil thin ends of falling daylight beams
in trench, plateau, plain, barrow of cloudy
schist;
a coterie of philosophers gathers to theorize
of crossing high oceans under clouds
of full sail.

3.
We may follow the descent of black backed
emperor penguins
from above bright heaven©ˆs sky of amethyst,
into the open jaws of unimpressed killer whales
compelled to sing on ocean floor the prayers
of killer whales.

4.
While posed as sailing angels we were tattooed
on high,
in tomorrow's gray swelling skyscrapers pale
to become now useless ballast stones as a sinking
hull
sweetens unknown landscapes undreamt of.

5.
Do not mourn the passing of sea creatures
into sustenance
crossing high ocean under clouds of full sail;
that unwholesome meat, tossed red
into sponginess
sweetens unknown landscapes undreamt of.
And forever anon and forever anon penguin
compelled to sing on ocean floor the prayers of
killer whales
weep to be allowed to drink from flukes of
heartless brine
for in ocean mind there is no drying soil.

6.
Fashion scrimshaw as your craft teases
mumbling heaves
for in tomorrow's gray swelling skyscrapers pale.
Let terran sand dissolve within faultless sea
for under our empty sea a turquoise world exists.

Companions in Wind

Exuberance flowed through flames of hair
from blasts of rain sustained in open air
on sixty miles of North America.
Had this 10 a.m. been clear
jubilating music would've slung out
of a steel bed in pursuit of our voices
and a liver painted log truck.

Admiring uplands,
our eyes would soon hunt jackrabbits
on a rich malpais of endless basalt.
Overstepping polychrome
we would wonder at and mourn
rectangular Mogollon kivas exposed
to the twentieth century.
Postcards sent to girlfriends
knowingly untenable in Johnson,
could not recount in pictures
or dashed off words, a widening world.
Bivouacked within mummy bags
beside momentary landscapes
dotted by hogans and Quonset huts;
ratatat constellations would soon run
for 360 degrees around
a campfire's helix of aspiring embers.

But as it was,
at 10 a.m. rain hissed static.
A mahogany guitar persevered beneath
the billows of a ragged blue poncho
as ends of cloth waved in spray
atomized over spinning tires painting
wet lines on a crumbling New York highway.

Reverie

Men barked nonsense on Lunar hills,
deaf to the music of our moon.
When her glassine sands were pressed,
to transmit clips of harlequin white;
conquest illuminated the dome of night.

To understand why her ungodly face
appears to mourn;
ask why we strolled the lunar hills,
and danced upon her virgin humps-
our follicles, and fragile toes
encased in air conditioned boots.

And when each nerve is dead enough,
and soothed
to see our silver mirror ebb and wax,
as spheres and hemispheres descend
to dream in undreamt volumes
deepened by a drum of tidal urge-

perhaps our sable voices will return
so that we sing,
to sail like drunken Greeks
through timeless stars, and stir
the rainless latitudes that sweep
to span the Sea of Tranquility.

Copyright © 1998-2005 Marc Awodey

Cover Design: Joseph McNair